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Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

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Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#691

Post by spade »

harrisreynolds wrote: post #334

HUGE news in the grocery delivery space. Groceries are one of the few large markets that require some proximity to customers due to costs and spoilage. Each grocery store is a type of mini-distribution center for grocery products. Shipt and Instacart have succeeded to date because they use existing distribution channels and set up marketplaces for the "last-mile" of delivery. This is in contrast to Webvan in the earl…

Do you think this acquisition actually opens doors for Instacart/Shipt? Existing grocery chains are now going up against Amazon. Maybe they'll be more willing to partner with Instacart/Shipt to compete?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#692

Post by Spooky23 »

rainbowmverse wrote: post #141
ccorda wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Place an order by noon for groceries plus anything you want from Amazon. Amazon fills up truck(s) at whatehouse and drops off at local Whole Foods. Stop by on your way home from work and they bring your items to your car. You get free same day delivery. Amazon just greatly saved on last mile delivery costs. That's the value of those nodes without having to store all the inventory.

I'm closer to Whole Foods' nearest distribution center than an actual Whole Foods. The nearest Whole Foods is almost 40 miles away. If this works out for Amazon, I wouldn't be surprised to see Walmart try and buy Trader Joe's. They own Aldi, which has made a big push to compete with Walmart's reach outside cities. The nearest Aldi is closer than Walmart, and that's already not far away.

Both Aldi and Trader Joe's are private and can avoid these entanglements.

This deal was more about corporate politics and shareholder drama than anything else.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#693

Post by Spooky23 »

zebrafish wrote: post #89
maxerickson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is right, Whole Foods stores are already full of...food. They don't have room for hundreds of additional products, never mind tens of thousands.

The products Amazon is trying to distribute with this deal are.... food products.

Amazon could get rid of the big bullshit medicine section that Whole Foods has and replace it with useful products.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#694

Post by dragonwriter »

drtz wrote: post #689
prewett wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are paying in cash, not stock. The company sold the stock a long time ago, so whatever the stock does has no impact on the company. The stockholders, however, benefited 3.5%, assuming they sell now.

The cash itself is owned by the shareholders.

No, the cash is owned by the corporation. The shareholders own the right to participate in corporate governance in the degree appropriate to the particular shares they own, and own the right to take ownership of a particular share of the net assets if and when the corporation should be dissolved.

They do not, either in theory or in practice, own the assets of the corporation while it exists.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#695

Post by Spooky23 »

kp1234321 wrote: post #677
harrisreynolds wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you. And agree. But that is a different problem. To eat healthy on a very low wage you need to live enough out of the city to be able plant a garden and grow your own vegetables. OR shop at a place like Aldi but make sure to buy fresh food instead of the packaged crap. But Whole Paycheck is a different market.

It's my understanding that growing your own food was way more expensive than buying it, even from a premium market like Whole Foods.

No way. You can grow vegetables for almost nothing.

If you're dopey about it, you can easily spend $500 to grow $20 of tomatoes.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#696

Post by IntelMiner »

fivestar wrote: post #406
irfanka wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly the reason why there aren't any Software Developer Unions these days.

Intelligent people capable of negotiating their pay in a market such as that for software development would only be encumbered by unions. Are there warts? Sure there are. Nothing is perfect.

That's an incredibly insulting and dismissive framing of the issue.

Unions are important in many industries, including software development. You and your employer may have a good method of negotiating your pay, but that doesn't make it universal

Belittling the presumed intelligence is completely unnecessary

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#697

Post by acchow »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #572
panarky wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great discussion of company culture, treatment of employees, worker cooperatives, etc., but I hoped HN would go deeper into the business and technology implications. What is the strategic logic behind this move? NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Bloomberg all take the same line: this is about Amazon's expansion into brick-and-mortar retail. They need a physical footprint, knock out Instacart for delivery, accelerate Amazon G…

It's worth pointing out that the purchase, as based on today's price action, was effectively "free". Amazon market cap went up 3.5% as of the current tick, roughly $15.5B. The market effectively rewarded AMZN for the transaction far beyond the actual $13.7B tender offer!

This is synergy. The market thinks that WFM + AMZN together as one is worth more than the sum of their parts. I should hope so.

"effectively free" is a strange label to give this.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#698

Post by eric_the_read »

eric_the_read wrote: post #681
Shivetya wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me I fail to see the value because Aldi is here and expanding and now Lidi is following. while they may be on the opposite end of the market from Whole foods I do think they are where the market will truly end up. The middle to higher end grocery stores are going to face a tough time with the discounters and we have yet to see if the European model of grocery can covert a large number of shoppers. with regards to…

The value is that Aldi is nowhere near here, and Lidi is completely un-heard-of. The only reason I know about Aldi is that I spent a couple of years working in Chicago (and living further out), and even there I had to drive a long ways out of my way to find an Aldi. I think I went once in the 2 years I was there. Whole Foods is everywhere.

Well, I'm wrong. There are ~430 WF locations worldwide; there are 1,600 Aldis in the US. it's just that aside from southern California, they don't seem to have a lot of locations in the West. My closest Aldi is ~550 miles away; my closest Whole Foods is a lot closer.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#699

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

entwife wrote: post #619
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for Palo Alto Whole Foods from 2008-2011, and I think one thing that really hurt the company was that they aggressively overexpanded. Does Santa Cruz need two stores (Capitola is practically Santa Cruz)? A Blossom Hill store? Competing with Los Gatos and Campbell? At the time (I was s cashier) WF culture was dead set against self checkout stands, because they really wanted someone to be there to help custome…

They have also over expanded in Berkeley/Oakland. Three WF between Lake Merritt and Albany is too many, and they are opening a 4th. They should open more in other parts of the East Bay, such as San Lorenzo, Freemont, other parts of Oakland, etc. Only the 27th street WF is as good as the many, many other natural/whole/organic foods stores there.

They finally opened in Fremont a few years ago. A decent choice (though it cannibalizes some customers from PA)

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#700

Post by sqeaky »

throwaway91111 wrote: post #613
wooter wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

name a single commune as successful or operating at the scale of Whole Foods or Amazon. in history.

Why? What's your point? Just sayig you can't possibly pin the benefits on capitalism—you know very well whole foods would avoid hiring anyone if they didn't have to. That is capitalism: minimize loss of money. Whole foods is a good employer IN SPITE of being capitalist.

There is a competitive advantage in having real loyalty from employees. Treating people well makes them want to be loyal.

Even Walmart has started realizing this. It turns out that when you hire unmotivated people, pay them as little as possible, screw them on medical benefits, pay them too little to get their own apartment and in general work them harder than everyone else in that job sector that you get people who don't do a good job. In the past several years, Walmart has instituted new wage plans, better medical benefits, productivity goals from corporate that are still unreasonable but not insane and they think it is worth the money.

I don't know if Amazon has learned this expensive lesson, but a business can run with high employee turnover and dissatisfaction for a long time before it catches up to them. Once it becomes apparent it is often too late to fix without losing heavily in the marketplace.

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